The Hard SF Renaissance

by David G. Hartwell

  The abyss is grinning at them, teeth bared.

  A mouth stretches across the width of the beam, and extends into darkness on either side. It is crammed with conical teeth the size of human hands, and they do not look the least bit fragile.

  Ballard makes a strangled sound and dives into the mud. The benthic ooze boils up around her in a seething cloud; she disappears in a torrent of planktonic corpses.

  Lenie Clarke stops and waits, unmoving. She stares transfixed at that threatening smile. Her whole body feels electrified, she has never been so explicitly aware of herself. Every nerve fires and freezes at the same time. She is terrified.

  But she is also, somehow, completely in control of herself. She reflects on this paradox as Ballard’s abandoned squid slows and stops itself, scant meters from that endless row of teeth. She wonders at her own analytical clarity as the third squid, with its burden of sensors, decelerates past and takes up position beside Ballard’s.

  There in the light, the grin does not change.

  After a few moments, Clarke raises her sonar pistol and fires. We’re here, she realizes, checking the readout. That’s the outcropping.

  She swims closer. The smile hangs there, enigmatic and enticing. Now she can see bits of bone at the roots of the teeth, and tatters of decomposed flesh trailing from the gums.

  She turns and backtracks. The cloud on the seabed has nearly settled.

  “Ballard,” she says in her synthetic voice.

  Nobody answers.

  Clarke reaches down through the mud, feeling blind, until she touches something warm and trembling.

  The seabed explodes in her face.

  Ballard erupts from the substrate, trailing a muddy comet’s tail. Her hand rises from that sudden cloud, clasped around something glinting in the transient light. Clarke sees the knife, twists almost too late; the blade glances off her ’skin, igniting nerves along her ribcage. Ballard lashes out again. This time Clarke catches the knife-hand as it shoots past, twists it, pushes. Ballard tumbles away.

  “It’s me!” Clarke shouts; the ’skin turns her voice into a tinny vibrato.

  Ballard rises up again, white eyes unseeing, knife still in hand.

  Clarke holds up her hands. “It’s okay! There’s nothing here! It’s dead!”

  Ballard stops. She stares at Clarke. She looks over to the squids, to the smile they illuminate. She stiffens.

  “It’s some kind of whale,” Clarke says. “It’s been dead a long time.”

  “A … a whale?” Ballard rasps. She begins to shake.

  There’s no need to feel embarrassed, Clarke almost says, but doesn’t. Instead, she reaches out and touches Ballard lightly on the arm. Is this how you do it? she wonders.

  Ballard jerks back as if scalded.

  I guess not …

  “Um, Jeanette …” Clarke begins.

  Ballard raises a trembling hand, cutting Clarke off. “I’m okay. I want to g … I think we should get back now, don’t you?”

  “Okay,” Clarke says. But she doesn’t really mean it.

  She could stay out here all day.

  Ballard is at the library again. She turns, passing a casual hand over the brightness control as Clarke comes up behind her; the display darkens before Clarke can see what it is.

  “It was a Ziphiid,” Ballard says. “A beaked whale. Very rare. They don’t dive this deep.”

  Clarke listens, not really interested.

  “It must have died and rotted further up, and sank.” Ballard’s voice is slightly raised. She looks almost furtively at something on the other side of the lounge. “I wonder what the chances are of that happening.”

  “What?”

  “I mean, in all the ocean, something that big just happening to drop out of the sky a few hundred meters away. The odds of that must be pretty low.”

  “Yeah. I guess so.” Clarke reaches over and brightens the display. One half of the screen glows softly with luminous text. The other holds the rotating image of some complex molecule.

  “What’s this?” Clarke asks.

  Ballard steals another glance across the lounge. “Just an old biopsyche text the library had on file. I was browsing through it. Used to be an interest of mine.”

  Clarke looks at her. “Uh-huh.” She bends over and studies the display. Some sort of technical chemistry. The only thing she really understands is the caption beneath the graphic.

  She reads it aloud, “True Happiness.”

  “Yeah. A tricyclic with four side chains.” Ballard points at the screen. “Whenever you’re happy, really happy, that’s what does it to you.”

  “When did they find that out?”

  “I don’t know. It’s an old book.”

  Clarke stares at the revolving simulacrum. It disturbs her, somehow. It floats there over that smug stupid caption, and it says something she doesn’t want to hear.

  You’ve been solved, it tells her. You’re mechanical. Chemicals and electricity. Everything you are, every dream, every action, it all comes down to a change of voltage somewhere, or a—what did she say—a tricyclic with four side chains …

  “It’s wrong,” Clarke murmurs. Or they’d be able to fix us, when we broke down . ..

  “Sorry?” Ballard says.

  “It’s saying we’re just these … soft computers. With faces.”

  Ballard shuts off the terminal.

  “That’s right,” she says. “And some of us may even be losing those.”

  The jibe registers, but it doesn’t hurt. Clarke straightens and moves towards the ladder.

  “Where are you going? You going outside again?” Ballard asks.

  “The shift isn’t over. I thought I’d clean out the duct on number two.”

  “It’s a bit late to start on that, Lenie. The day will be over before we’re even half done.” Ballard’s eyes dart away again. This time Clarke follows the glance to the full-length mirror on the far wall.

  She sees nothing of particular interest there.

  “I’ll work late.” Clarke grabs the railing, swings her foot onto the top rung.

  “Lenie,” Ballard says, and Clarke swears she hears a tremor in that voice. She looks back, but the other woman is moving to Communications. “Well, I’m afraid I can’t go with you,” she’s saying. “I’m in the middle of debugging one of the telemetry routines.”

  “That’s fine,” Clarke says. She feels the tension starting to rise. Beebe is shrinking again. She starts down the ladder.

  “Are you sure you’re okay going out alone? Maybe you should wait until tomorrow.”

  “No. I’m okay.”

  “Well, remember to keep your receiver open. I don’t want you getting lost on me again …”

  Clarke is in the wetroom. She climbs into the airlock and runs through the ritual. It no longer feels like drowning. It feels like being born again.

  She awakens into darkness, and the sound of weeping.

  She lies there for a few minutes, confused and uncertain. The sobs come from all sides, soft but omnipresent in Beebe’s resonant shell. She hears nothing else except her own heartbeat.

  She is afraid. She isn’t sure why. She wishes the sounds would go away.

  Clarke rolls off her bunk and fumbles at the hatch. It opens into a semi-darkened corridor; meager light escapes from the lounge at one end. The sounds come from the other direction, from deepening darkness. She follows them through an infestation of pipes and conduits.

  Ballard’s quarters. The hatch is open. An emerald readout sparkles in the darkness, bestowing no detail upon the hunched figure on the pallet.

  “Ballard,” Clarke says softly. She does not want to go in.

  The shadow moves, seems to look up at her. “Why won’t you show it?” it says, its voice pleading.

  Clarke frowns in the darkness. “Show what?”

  “You know what! How … afraid you are!”

  “Afraid?”

  “Of being here, of being stuck at the bottom of this h
orrible dark ocean …”

  “I don’t understand,” Clarke whispers. The claustrophobia in her, restless again, begins to stir.

  Ballard snorts, but the derision seems forced. “Oh, you understand all right. You think this is some sort of competition, you think if you can just keep it all inside you’ll win somehow … but it isn’t like that at all, Lenie, it isn’t helping to keep it hidden like this, we’ve got to be able to trust each other down here or we’re lost …”

  She shifts slightly on the bunk. Clarke’s eyes, enhanced by the caps, can pick out a few details now; rough edges embroider Ballard’s silhouette, the folds and creases of normal clothing, unbuttoned to the waist. She thinks of a cadaver, half-dissected, rising on the table to mourn its own mutilation.

  “I don’t know what you mean,” Clarke says.

  “I’ve tried to be friendly,” Ballard says. “I’ve tried to get along with you, but you’re so cold, you won’t even admit … I mean, you couldn’t like it down here, nobody could, why can’t you just admit—”

  “But I don’t, I . : . I hate it in here. It’s like Beebe’s going to … to clench around me. And all I can do is wait for it to happen.”

  Ballard nods in the darkness. “Yes, yes, I know what you mean.” She seems somehow encouraged by Clarke’s admission. “And no matter how much you tell yourself—” She stops. “You hate it in here?”

  Did I say something wrong? Clarke wonders.

  “Out there is hardly any better, you know,” Ballard says. “Outside is even worse! There’s mudslides and steam vents and giant fish trying to eat you all the time, you can’t possibly … but … you don’t mind all that, do you?”

  Somehow, her tone has turned accusing. Clarke shrugs.

  “No, you don’t.” Ballard is speaking slowly now. Her voice drops to a whisper. “You actually like it out there. Don’t you?”

  Reluctantly, Clarke nods. “Yeah. I guess so.”

  “But it’s so … the rift can kill you, Lenie. It can kill us. A hundred different ways. Doesn’t that scare you?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t think about it much. I guess it does, sort of.”

  “Then why are you so happy out there?” Ballard cries. “It doesn’t make any sense …”

  I’m not exactly “happy”, Clarke thinks. Aloud, she only says, “I don’t know. It’s not that weird, lots of people do dangerous things. What about free-fallers? What about mountain climbers?”

  But Ballard doesn’t answer. Her silhouette has grown rigid on the bed. Suddenly, she reaches over and turns on the cubby light.

  Lenie Clarke blinks against the sudden brightness. Then the room dims as her eyecaps darken.

  “Jesus Christ!” Ballard shouts at her. “You sleep in that fucking costume now?”

  It is something else Clarke hasn’t thought about. It just seems easier.

  “All this time I’ve been pouring my heart out to you and you’ve been wearing that machine’s face! You don’t even have the decency to show me your goddamned eyes!”

  Clarke steps back, startled. Ballard rises from the bed and takes a single step forward. “To think you could actually pass for human before they gave you that suit! Why don’t you go find something to play with out in your fucking ocean!”

  And slams the hatch in Clarke’s face.

  Lenie Clarke stares at the sealed bulkhead for a few moments. Her face, she knows, is calm. Her face is usually calm. But she stands there, unmoving, until the cringing thing inside of her unfolds a little.

  “Yes,” she says at last, very softly. “I think I will.”

  Ballard is waiting for her as she emerges from the airlock. “Lenie,” she says quietly, “we have to talk. It’s important.”

  Clarke bends over and removes her fins. “Go ahead.”

  “Not here. In my cubby.”

  Clarke looks at her.

  “Please.”

  Clarke starts up the ladder.

  “Aren’t you going to take—” Ballard stops as Clarke looks down. “Never mind. It’s okay.”

  They ascend into the lounge. Ballard takes the lead. Clarke follows her down the corridor and into her cabin. Ballard dogs the hatch and sits on her bunk, leaving room for Clarke.

  Clarke looks around the cramped space. Ballard has curtained over the mirrored bulkhead with a spare sheet.

  Ballard pats the bed beside her. “Come on, Lenie. Sit down.”

  Reluctantly, Clarke sits. Ballard’s sudden kindness confuses her. Ballard hasn’t acted this way since …

  … Since she had the upper hand.

  “—might not be easy for you to hear,” Ballard is saying, “but we have to get you off the rift. They shouldn’t have put you down here in the first place.”

  Clarke does not reply. She waits.

  “Remember the tests they gave us?” Ballard continues. “They measured our tolerance to stress; confinement, prolonged isolation, chronic physical danger, that sort of thing.”

  Clarke nods slightly. “So?”

  “So,” says Ballard, “did you think for a moment they’d test for those qualities without knowing what sort of person would have them? Or how they got to be that way?”

  Inside, Clarke goes very still. Outside, nothing changes.

  Ballard leans forward a bit. “Remember what you said? About mountain climbers, and free-fallers, and why people deliberately do dangerous things? I’ve been reading up, Lenie. Ever since I got to know you I’ve been reading up—”

  Got to know me?

  “—and do you know what thrillseekers have in common? They all say that you haven’t lived until you’ve nearly died. They need the danger. It gives them a rush.”

  You don’t know me at all …

  “Some of them are combat veterans, some were hostages for long periods, some just spent a lot of time in dead zones for one reason or another. And a lot of the really compulsive ones—”

  Nobody knows me.

  “—the ones who can’t be happy unless they’re on the edge, all the time—a lot of them got started early, Lenie. When they were just children. And you, I bet … you don’t even like being touched …”

  Go away. Go away.

  Ballard puts her hand on Clarke’s shoulder. “How long were you abused, Lenie?” she asks gently. “How many years?”

  Clarke shrugs off the hand and does not answer. He didn’t mean any harm. She shifts on the bunk, turning away slightly.

  “That’s it, isn’t it? You don’t just have a tolerance to trauma, Lenie. You’ve got an addiction to it. Don’t you?”

  It only takes Clarke a moment to recover. The ’skin, the eyecaps make it easier. She turns calmly back to Ballard. She even smiles a little.

  “No,” she says. “I don’t.”

  “There’s a mechanism,” Ballard tells her. “I’ve been reading about it. Do you know how the brain handles stress, Lenie? It dumps all sorts of addictive stimulants into the bloodstream. Beta-endorphins, opioids. If it happens often enough, for long enough, you get hooked. You can’t help it.”

  Clarke feels a sound in her throat, a jagged coughing noise a bit like tearing metal. After a moment, she recognises it as laughter.

  “I’m not making it up!” Ballard insists. “You can look it up yourself if you don’t believe me! Don’t you know how many abused children spend their whole lives hooked on wife beaters or self-mutilation or free-fall—”

  “And it makes them happy, is that it?” Clarke asks with cold disdain. “They enjoy getting raped, or punched out, or—”

  “No, of course you’re not happy!” Ballard cuts in. “But what you feel, that’s probably the closest you’ve ever come. So you confuse the two, you look for stress anywhere you can find it. It’s physiological addiction, Lenie. You ask for it. You always asked for it.”

  I ask for it. Ballard has been reading, and Ballard knows: Life is pure electrochemistry. No use explaining how it feels. No use explaining that there are far worse things than being beaten up. Th
ere are even worse things than being held down and raped by your own father. There are the times between, when nothing happens at all. When he leaves you alone, and you don’t know for how long. You sit across the table from him, forcing yourself to eat while your bruised insides try to knit themselves back together; and he pats you on the head and smiles at you, and you know the reprieve has already lasted too long, he’s going to come for you tonight, or tomorrow, or maybe the next day.

  Of course I asked for it. How else could I get it over with?

  “Listen,” Clarke says. Her voice is shaking. She takes a deep breath, tries again. “You’re completely wrong. Completely. You don’t have a clue what you’re talking about.”

  But Ballard shakes her head. “Sure I do, Lenie. Believe it. You’re hooked on your own pain, and so you go out there and keep daring the rift to kill you, and eventually it will, don’t you see? That’s why you shouldn’t be here. That’s why we have to get you back.”

  Clarke stands up. “I’m not going back.” She turns to the hatch.

  Ballard reaches out toward her. “Listen, you’ve got to stay and hear me out. There’s more.”

  Clarke looks down at her with complete indifference. “Thanks for your concern. But I can go any time I want to.”

  “You go out there now and you’ll give everything away, they’re watching us! Can’t you figure it out yet?” Ballard’s voice is rising. “Listen, they knew about you! They were looking for someone like you! They’ve been testing us, they don’t know yet what kind of person works out better down here, so they’re watching and waiting to see who cracks first! This whole program is still experimental, can’t you see that? Everyone they’ve sent down—you, me, Ken Lubin and Lana Cheung, it’s all part of some cold-blooded test …”

  “And you’re failing it,” Clarke says softly. “I see.”

  “They’re using us, Lenie—don’t go out there!”

  Ballard’s fingers grasp at Clarke like the suckers of an octopus. Clarke pushes them away. She undogs the hatch and pushes it open. She hears Ballard rising behind her.

  “You’re sick!” Ballard screams. something smashes into the back of Clarke’s head. She goes sprawling out into the corridor. One arm smacks painfully against a cluster of pipes as she falls.